Health Policy Reform - Global Health versus Private Profit

Health Policy Reform - Global Health versus Private Profit

When John Lister’s book Health Policy Reform: Driving the Wrong Way was published in 2005, it was hailed as ‘the definitive critique of market-oriented health care ‘reforms’ that the World Bank has been promoting at least since 1993’. He produced a crucial argument in favour of equity-oriented, rights-based approaches to the design and operation of health systems, in both rich and poor countries alike.

Much has changed since John Lister’s first book was published, but the pressure for the introduction of market-based approaches has remained undiminished. Now, in a revised and restructured analysis, Health Policy Reform: Global Health versus Private Profit, John Listerbrings his critique of health policy up-to-date. He continues to question whether the major 'reforms' which have been, and are still being, introduced are driven primarily by the health needs of the wider population or, in fact, by non-health considerations - the financial and political concerns of governments and global institutions. The global economic recession at the end of the first decade of this century adds even more urgency to the need to understand the implications of these trends.

“John Lister’s excellent book is essential reading for all students and practitioners of health and social care who want to understand the context within which they are now being condemned to work, and start changing it.”

Julian Tudor Hart, author of The Political Economy of Health Care: A Clinical Perspective

“John Lister has written a really important book [which] is as ambitious, as all-encompassing and as undoctrinaire as to qualify as a sort of Doyal’s Political Economy of Health for the 21st century.”

Professor John S Yudkin MD FRCP, Emeritus Professor of Medicine and former Director, International Health and Medical Education Centre, University College London

“In this penetrating, highly readable and extremely well-researched book, John Lister takes on the narrative being peddled by the new global elite and their cheerleaders who are mounting a sustained attack on what remains of the welfare state, with health care as one of their prime targets. Lister shows that there is an alternative, but it is up to us to seize it.”

Professor Martin McKee CBE, Professor of European Public Health, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

“At a critical time for public health care and health systems across the world, John Lister’s book gives us valuable insights into the forces that are arrayed against universal health care, and how capitalism is consuming our basic rights and entitlements. It’s up to us to organise to take them back.”

Allyson Pollock, Professor of Public Health Research and Policy at Queen Mary, University of London

“John Lister’s latest book is the summation of half a lifetime’s research and teaching on health and health policy by a committed scholar–activist. … Lister’s knowledge of the literature, lucid reasoning and clean prose are a class act. This is a major achievement which everyone interested in health needs to read.”

Colin Leys, Emeritus Professor of Political Studies, Queen’s University, Canada, joint author of The Plot Against the NHS

“John Lister’s book is a must-read for anyone passionate about universal health care [who wants] to understand its greatest obstacle and where we must focus our fight.”

Anna Marriott, Health Policy Advisor, Oxfam GB

“The political economy of health care remains largely camouflaged in ‘zombie’ ideas with deep roots in a neoliberal orthodoxy. John Lister’s book makes an important contribution to informed health-policy debates and should be essential reading for progressive health reformers worldwide.”

Ronald Labonté, Canada Research Chair, Globalization and Health Equity, and Professor, Faculty of Medicine Institute of Population Health, Ottawa

“John Lister’s book is an encyclopaedic, thoroughly referenced update of his 2005 work. It gives us a crucial, elegant and comprehensive update on many issues as we begin to discuss what next after the Millennium Development Goals.”

Claudio Schuftan, People’s Health Movement, Ho Chi Minh City

About the author

Author John Lister has been a prominent and outspoken health campaigner, as Information Director of London Health Emergency, for over 25 years. He is also Senior Lecturer in Health Journalism at Coventry University. His books include: Health Policy Reform – Driving the Wrong Way? (Middlesex University Press, 2005) , The NHS After 60 – for Patients or Profits? (Middlesex University Press, 2008).and Europe's Health for Sale - The Heavy Cost of Privatisation (Libri Publishing Ltd., 2011).